Drug dealer caught hiding in a wardrobe after cops raid his home

A drug dealer who hid in a wardrobe when police came to arrest him has been jailed for more than five years.

Photos taken from body camera footage show the moment police swooped on an address and found Tallanius Bridgland, 29, hiding in a walk-in wardrobe packed with clothes.

Detectives from Kent Police had identified a mobile phone number in July this year, which had been used to contact a known drug user on multiple occasions.

Investigators were able to link the same phone number to a man connected to an address in Folkestone, Kent.

Officers went to the address on October 2 and arrested Bridgland after finding him hidden in the wardrobe.

A search of the property with the assistance of a police drugs dog led to the recovery of wraps of class A drugs, also found inside the bedroom.

Some of the wraps – which contained cocaine and heroin – had been stashed inside a large tub of nail varnish bottles. Cash and a mobile phone were also seized.

Bridgland admitted being involved with the drugs after a police investigation, leading his charge from police.

He pleaded guilty and on Tuesday at Canterbury Crown Court and he was jailed for five years and seven months.

Detective Sergeant Scott Drake of Kent Police, said: ‘Drug addiction causes no end of misery to the lives of users and everyone concerned with them, as well as to those communities where the effects of substance addiction ripple out.

‘Dealers, who are the root of the problem, may go to all ends to try to avoid us but we will always strive to bring them to justice and to remove drugs from the streets of Kent.’

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